Should firms conceal information when dealing with common suppliers?

A firm making quantity decision under uncertainty loses profit if its private information is leaked to competitors. Outsourcing increases this risk as a third party supplier may leak information for its own benefit. The firm may choose to conceal information from the competitors by entering in a confidentiality agreement with the supplier. This, however, diminishes the firm's ability to dampen competition by signaling a higher quantity commitment. We examine this trade‐off in a stylized supply chain in which two firms, endowed with private demand information, order sequentially from a common supplier, and engage in differentiated quantity competition. In our model, the supplier can set different wholesale prices for firms, and the second‐mover firm could be better informed. Contrary to what is expected, information concealment is not always beneficial to the first mover. We characterize conditions under which the first mover firm will not prefer concealing information. We show that this depends on the relative informativeness of the second mover and is moderated by competition intensity. We examine the supplier's incentive in participating in information concealment, and develop a contract that enables it for wider set of parameter values. We extend our analysis to examine firms' incentive to improve information. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 62:1–15, 2015     

Social benefits of government investment in enterprises

A critical issue for many governments is boosting the adoption rates of products or technologies that enhance consumer surplus or total social welfare. Governments may, for example, pay subsidies to producers or to consumers to stimulate the manufacture or consumption of specific products, for example, energy-efficient appliances or more effective drugs. This research proposes a strategic government investment policy, namely, share acquisition, and demonstrates its effectiveness in reaching societal objectives. We consider a Cournot quantities-choice market comprised of homogeneous firms where the government intervenes to buy shares, and turning private firms into state-owned enterprises. We recognize that purchasing a single private firm is the optimal policy for the government to reach its societal objectives. Additionally, taking into consideration financial constraints, we find that the optimal stake increases with the budget. Compared with the optimal output-based subsidy policy, when the budget is low, the optimal government investment policy induces a higher consumer surplus. In addition, in differentiated Cournot competition, under which firms compete in selling substitutable products, we find that when the budget is sufficient, the optimal stake purchased first decreases and then increases according to the substitutability level among products.     

Impacts of sequential acquisition,market competition mode,and confidentiality on information flow

We investigate information flow in a setting in which 2 retailers order from a supplier and sell to a market with uncertain demand. Each retailer has access to a signal. The retailers can disclose signals to each other (horizontal information sharing), while the supplier can solicit signals by offering retailers differential payments as incentives for signal disclosure (vertical information acquisition). In the base setting, market competition is in quantity, and a retailer can fully infer the signal that the other retailer discloses to the supplier. We show that the supplier prefers to sequentialize the procedure for information acquisition. Moreover, vertical information acquisition by the supplier is a strategic complement to horizontal information sharing between the retailers to establish information flow. In the equilibrium, the retailers have no incentive to exchange signals, but system wide information transparency can be realized through a combination of information acquisition and inference. We further study the signaling effect, whereby the supplier utilizes wholesale pricing as an instrument to affect the retailers' inference of the shared signals, and price competition to explore their impacts on the supplier's preference for sequential acquisition and the sustainability of information flow.     

舰舰协同制导下舰空导弹水平发射区研究

为增加舰空导弹拦截低空目标的发射时机,研究了舰舰协同制导下舰空导弹水平发射区.首先分别计算了单舰制导和雷达哨舰接力制导下水平发射区;然后在坐标系内合成得到舰舰协同制导下舰空导弹水平发射区.通过仿真比较,得出舰舰协同制导下比单舰制导下目标航路捷径增加了35%左右,舰空导弹水平发射区的纵深显著增加的结论,为舰艇作战指挥决策提供了较好的理论依据.     

Timing of information acquisition in a competitive environment

This article investigates the impact of timing on sellers' information acquisition strategies in a duopoly setting. Market uncertainty is captured by a representative consumer who has a private taste for the product's horizontal attribute, and both sellers can acquire this information either before (ex‐ante acquisition) or after (ex‐post acquisition) observing their own product qualities. We identify several conflicting effects of information acquisition that vary significantly in its timing and market characteristics. In the monopoly scenario, information acquisition is unambiguously beneficial and ex‐ante acquisition is the dominant option, because it helps a seller not only design the proper product but also craft better pricing strategy. By contrast, when there is competition, information acquisition eliminates the buffer role of market uncertainty and leads to the fiercest production or pricing competition, which makes the subsequent effects of acquisition detrimental, and a seller's payoff is nonmonotonic in terms of its acquisition cost. Moreover, compared with the ex‐ante information acquisition, ex‐post information acquisition normally generates higher sellers' equilibrium payoffs by postponing the timing of acquisition and maintaining product differentiation. Nonetheless, ex‐post information acquisition also provides the seller with greater acquisition incentive and occasionally makes him worse off than that in the ex‐ante scenario. Thus, in a competitive environment, having the option of information acquisition and flexibility in its timing can be both detrimental and irresistible. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 3–22, 2016     

Inventory competition with yield reliability improvement

This article studies the inventory competition under yield uncertainty. Two firms with random yield compete for substitutable demand: If one firm suffers a stockout, which can be caused by yield failure, its unsatisfied customers may switch to its competitor. We first study the case in which two competing firms decide order quantities based on the exogenous reliability levels. The results from the traditional inventory competition are generalized to the case with yield uncertainty and we find that quantity and reliability can be complementary instruments in the competition. Furthermore, we allow the firms to endogenously improve their yield reliability before competing in quantity. We show that the reliability game is submodular under some assumptions. The results indicate that the competition in quantity can discourage the reliability improvement. With an extensive numerical study, we also demonstrate the robustness of our analytical results in more general settings. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 107–126, 2015     

Why provoke? the Sino-US competition in East Asia and North Korea’s strategic choice

This article seeks to make sense of North Korean provocations in light of the Sino-US strategic competition in post-Cold War East Asia, where such variables as China’s rise, US’s pivot to Asia, and growing Sino-ROK economic ties are driving the strategic choices of major states in the region. The article examines the main motivations behind Pyongyang’s provocations since the end of the Cold War, discusses their implications for the Sino-US strategic competition in East Asia, and offers predictions about the future of North Korean provocations. The central thesis of the article is that Pyongyang has exploited the Sino-US strategic competition in East Asia for its regime survival. By raising North Korea’s strategic value to China, the intensifying Sino-US competition allows Pyongyang to continue provocations, regardless of Beijing’s explicit opposition.     

Competitive location and capacity decisions for firms serving time‐sensitive customers

In this article we explore how two competing firms locate and set capacities to serve time‐sensitive customers. Because customers are time‐sensitive, they may decline to place an order from either competitor if their expected waiting time is large. We develop a two‐stage game where firms set capacities and then locations, and show that three types of subgame perfect equilibria are possible: local monopoly (in which each customer is served by a single firm, but some customers may be left unserved), constrained local monopoly (in which firms serve the entire interval of customers but do not compete with each other), and constrained competition (in which firms also serve the entire interval of customers, but now compete for some customers). We perform a comparative statics analysis to illustrate differences in the equilibrium behavior of a duopolist and a coordinated monopolist. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2008     

全液压驱动管道机器人公理化设计

随着管道机器人应用领域与任务需求的不断增大,机器人设计中存在的问题日益突出,如输出功能相互耦合、定位精度不高以及复杂环境下可靠性低。针对石油水平井对于管道机器人的特殊应用需求,将公理化设计理论应用到机器人系统设计中,创新设计一种基于挠性支撑结构的全液压驱动管道机器人。概述公理化基本原理与设计过程,对全液压驱动管道机器人进行概念设计,完成设计耦合性分析。确定机器人机械系统与液压系统具体结构组成,并分析其工作机理。应用AMESim软件,对机器人运动原理方案进行仿真分析,结果表明:全液压驱动管道机器人可以实现自动往复运动,牵引力可以达到30 kN,运动速度可以达到0.12 m/s;机器人牵引能力与运动速度可以完成单独调节,从而实现解耦设计。     

建筑设计消防审核常见技术问题探析

针对建筑设计消防审核工作中容易出现的技术问题,从消防车道与建筑中人行通道的设置、自动喷水灭火系统末端试水装置与试水阀的设置、特殊场所快速响应喷头的选用、标准喷头的设置、自动喷水灭火系统集热板的应用、室内消火栓系统阀门的设置以及防火卷帘两侧火灾探测器组与警报装置的设置等方面解读了相关消防技术规范的规定,系统分析了建筑设计消防审核中的常见错误与问题,提出了有关技术规范规定的合理解释和使用建议。